I grew up in Australia in the late seventies and early eighties, so it was natural for me to think that someone else's culture was more valid than mine: The TV shows we saw were mostly imported; The local content was news or soap or procedural cop dramas; Australian children's television was always solid, but as kids we were already given the sense that things that were made for us were of less consequence than things created for adults; And shows for adults that had a sense of quality came from the US and UK.
Is that how you remember it? It's definitely the way we, as a culture, talk about it—especially when we have the inevitable "Why can't we produce good comedies" discussion we love to have.
To believe that requires excluding the comedies like Auntie Jack, which led to Norman Gunston, without which we would have never had Let the Blood Run Free or The Games.
There were also the Kennedy-Miller mini-series, the way for which was paved by Crawfords productions, which eventually led to Simpson-Le Mesurier productions and the excellent Good Guys Bad Guys in the early nineties.
Australia is a giant country with a relatively small population. Our two most populous cities (only the second smallest distance between two capital cities in Australia), are almost as far apart as Paris and Berlin. We feel isolated from each other as well as the rest of the world, and as a result there is an insecurity in our actions.
Recently a friend told me he wanted to start a podcast festival in Melbourne. His intention was to invite Marc Maron and John Hodgman, and their presence would encourage other big names to come.
He never mentioned an Australian podcast he would like to invite.
So, why do we look externally for validation?
When I went to my first Webstock conference (realistically one of the best-run events I've ever had the pleasure of attending), I was disappointed that a New Zealand-run event didn't have any antipodean speakers.
I thought about this for a bit. Should we blame the organisers? (They are lovely people and work very hard.) Maybe they had evidence to show that local people weren't a big enough draw card. That's definitely what other attendees had suggested to me.
If this is what attendees think, based on just attendee-to-attendee discussions, then it's probably true enough market research.
But this problem doesn't happen with other countries or cultures. The aforementioned US and UK both host plenty of web-design conferences that draw huge crowds.
Do we just accept out cultural cringe and live with it, or do we fight against it?
This is a design problem. This is a problem of getting people to accept something they unconsciously reject. Its a problem of changing minds and behaviour.
But is it a problem worth solving? What are the costs associated with building antipodean pride?
There is a very real possibility that we fear realising our already perceived irrelevance—that, despite everything we have already given the world (wifi, bionic ear, ova freezing techniques), we still never think we'll be listened to when we talk. And there's nothing worse than an irrelevant body pretending it has validity. How embarrassing!
There is, however, the contrary position. If we are supportive of our own work and push ourselves to produce better products, then maybe it won't matter what others think. Maybe we will develop a confidence to be content with our own attention.
This is not about local design for local people. It's about holding our own work to an international standard, supporting it when it reaches that level and encouraging efforts to surpass it.
We can only do that one step at a time. It's going to be tough, too, but relevance is demanded, not requested, and that takes grit.
This post was originally published in the Floate Design Partners blog
